It's Never too Late

He’d get to her. He’d fix this.

“Nonnie?”

“Mark? It’s me, Addy.”

Instant relief flooded him. And then the fear was back. Mark spoke in rapid staccato. “Make her go with them, Addy. They can give her something for her blood pressure.”

“I’m going with her, Mark. I left the room long enough to call you and that’s when she started refusing to go to the hospital. I’m back now. They’re already carrying her out. I’ll ride in the ambulance and meet you there.”

He squinted, dropped his lunch into the trash and reached into his pocket for his keys. “Where are they taking her?”

She named a hospital in Phoenix. He had no idea where it was but knew that the GPS on his phone would get him there by the quickest route.

He told Addy so, thanked her for being there and ran for the parking lot. He’d call his boss on the way.

The last thing he remembered as he turned the truck toward Phoenix was Jon wishing him good luck.

Luck be damned. He and Nonnie had been through low blood pressure before. As long as her brain still sent signals and her heart still ticked, they’d sail through this challenge, too.

He never should have listened to her, though. Never should have moved her across the country. She was eighty-one years old. With multiple sclerosis. The trip had obviously been too much for her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BY THE TIME Mark got to the hospital, Nonnie’s IV had been pumped with enough medication to get her blood pressure back to normal. Her heartbeat was steady and relatively strong. Her blood work had come back okay. Addy was smiling as she greeted him at the door of the emergency room, waiting to take him back to the cubicle where Nonnie was dozing on and off.

“She’s waiting for you to take her home,” she told Mark, relieved almost to the point of giddiness to be able to tell him that his grandmother was all right.

“She’s been released already?” he asked, his gaze seeming to devour her face, as though searching for any sign that she was hiding bad news.

“No, they’d like her to stay overnight, but she’s insisting on going home.”

He nodded. “I’ll talk to the doctor...”

“He already told her that if she has someone who’s willing to sit with her all night, and to check her blood pressure every hour, he’ll send her home. You’re going to have a hard time changing her mind now.”

Addy had decided that she’d be the one to stay up all night if necessary. She knew how to read a blood pressure gauge. And she didn’t have to work the next day.

“I have no intention of changing her mind,” Mark said. “I just want to know if I’m changing her medication at all before we get her out of here.”

Addy didn’t know why she was surprised. Of course Mark would go the extra mile for Nonnie.

He’d give up his life for her.

Because he was that kind of guy.

* * *

“YOU DON’T HAVE to stay,” Mark said. It was two in the morning and he and Addy had been sitting on his couch, watching Netflix and taking turns checking on Nonnie every fifteen minutes. Except when they woke her to check her blood pressure, his grandmother had been sleeping the whole time.

“Of course I’m staying,” Abby said. “You nap for an hour, and then I will, just like we said.”

“Seriously, I’m used to this. I won’t fall asleep.”

“You’ve done this before? Sat up all night? Checking on her every hour?”

He was tired, but fine. The important thing was that Nonnie was out of danger. “I was sixteen the first time her blood pressure dropped. She was unconscious at first, but as soon as they got her back up and running, she refused to stay at the hospital. She insisted that I was too young to be left home alone. Too many temptations.”

“Like you’d have gotten into trouble with her in the hospital sick.”